Lower Elementary

Lower Elementary

Welcome to the Lower Elementary page. We will use this section of the website to communicate upcoming events, field trips, classroom activities, and more. Our Lower Elementary teachers have designed an exciting and challenging curriculum that feeds from the lessons learned in Preschool and Kindergarten, as well as prepare the child for the journey to the Upper Elementary and beyond.

Overview of TMA Elementary Curriculum

At its most basic level, a Montessori education is a mode of thinking and problem-solving. The Montessori education fosters independent thinking and interdependent problem-solving, encouraging creativity and curiosity. Traditional education normalizes the way of thinking and standardizes the problem-solving abilities, stifling creativity and curiosity. A Montessori curriculum is the prepared environment where intelligence can grow exponentially.

The Lower Elementary curriculum is a 3-year program, comprised of the 5 Great Lessons: Universe, Life, Humans, Language and Math. Each Lesson is repeated each year. The child has a new perspective each year, and it meets them where they are, and offers self-exploration from there. The 5 Great Lessons are facts through story and no subject is taught in isolation. There is something to spark the interest in each child.

Maria Montessori believed that a healthy mind, body, and spirit are essential for success. To encourage creative expression and problem-solving, to make a positive contribution to the world, and to discover good health is a pleasure.

Montessori works! It has worked for more than one hundred years in thousands of Montessori schools around the world. Montessori has enjoyed the support of some leading personalities: including President Woodrow Wilson, Henry Ford, Helen Keller, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Ann Frank, in naming a few. More well-known people who benefit or have benefited from a Montessori education include:

"Many parents express the concern that Montessori at the Elementary level may not prepare them for the 'real world'. I'm not sure exactly what that means. Is it that their Primary Montessori experience was too secure, too child-centered, too accepting? Surely, those qualities cannot be seen as negatives!-one Elementary teacher's response to parents looking at Montessori versus traditional schooling. -Tomorrow's Child Magazine January 2011